


Lost & Found

by JazzRaft



Series: Dark at Night [38]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Fix-It, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-10-09 01:40:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10400874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: “It’s not going to work…”He turned to look across the fields, searching the ivory horizon for a face to match the voice, but it was as bare as unwritten paper. For a moment, he imagined that it could have been a remnant of his own voice. The thread of mortal doubt that strung itself around him as he’d approached the throne of Lucis.“Get out of my way!”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/157619395052/hc-for-nyxnoct-canon-ending-noctis-has-to) for [kittfox](http://kittfox.tumblr.com/).

“It’s been far too long since we’ve talked like this.”

Regis’s smile went wistful and sad. A mountain of regrets climbed high above his shoulders. Luna reached over to give his hand a squeeze, her expression open with forgiveness.

Noctis could barely remember a time where the both of them looked so… _light_.

Thirty years must have been sloughed off of his father. He looked as young as Noctis remembered his eyes always being. A child’s gaze in an old man’s face. A youthful longing restrained by the reserve of royal duty. Here, he looked like what Noctis had always wanted him to be and, he suspected, what Regis himself had always wanted to be, as well. His smile came so much easier than it used to. It spread broad and white from cheek to cheek and made Noctis’s heart feel a little less heavy.

And Luna was incandescent in the dawn light. The profound sadness she’d hid behind her stoic stare for all the years she’d borne the mantle of Oracle was erased. She radiated joy, was practically floating above the sylleblossoms. Her gaze was wide and clear, as boundless as a cloudless sky. She was so far beyond the limits which had once bound her, and so much more than an icon of the people now that her duty to them was done.

“I’ve missed you.”

They smiled at him, the light of freedom between them both so beautiful and bright it could have made him cry. But there were no tears in death, he was starting to understand. If the dead took their tears with them, it would rain every day on Eos, and there would be none left for the living to shed.

Maybe it was that thought which helped him hear the voice in the distance. At first, he hardly heard a thing, just mistook it for a whistle of the wind through the flower petals. Like a thought that was forgotten, but just on the verge of becoming remembered, it nudged at the back of his mind. It slowly grew into a faint, confusing whisper.

_“It’s not going to work…”_

He turned to look across the fields, searching the ivory horizon for a face to match the voice, but it was as bare as unwritten paper. For a moment, he imagined that it could have been a remnant of his own voice. The thread of mortal doubt that strung itself around him as he’d approached the throne of Lucis.

_“Get out of my way!”_

No, it wasn’t his own voice… although he knew this one as if it were. The sound of it, so far away and desperate to be closer, tugged inside him, made him tilt a little towards it.

“Noctis?” 

“You don’t hear them?”

He looked back at Regis and Luna, curiosity plain on their faces. They shared a brief glance before looking back at Noctis. Regis’s smile sobered, a mixture of relief and remorse swirling in his eyes.

“They’ve accomplished what I could not, it would seem,” he said, peering out at the field as if he could find them, too.

A new light, red-gold and familiar, began to illuminate above Noctis’s skin. He couldn’t quite place where he recognized it from, but it made the distant voices draw even closer, until it felt like they were yelling right next to his ears.

_“He’s gone, man! We don’t want it to be true either, but…”_

_“Fuck that! I’m not accepting that! They can’t have you, do you hear me?”_

The flowers began to shiver, bending against a strong gust of wind that suddenly sailed across the field. Strange silhouettes appeared in the distance. Like outlines of objects sketched on an artist’s canvas, slowly filling in beneath a brush he couldn’t see. When he turned back to the others, he found the opposite effect afflicted them. Color was beginning to drain from the two of them, turning them into transparent lines the more the rest of the world was filled in. Yet, neither of them seemed concerned by it, both of them continuing to smile at him.

“I’m grateful that I could finally say goodbye the way you deserved to hear it, my son,” Regis said. “And as much as I miss you, I’m grateful that there is still so much more life left for you to live.”

“Can’t you have it, too?” Noctis asked as the golden light grew stronger.

“It’s far too late for us, I’m afraid,” Luna said, her hand moving as if she wanted to reach out and touch him before she held it back. “I don’t envy you this second chance. I’m only proud that you’re so loved as to be granted it. Please, live the life you deserve. And please… pass on my eternal gratitude to Nyx. For all that he did for us. And for being there to love you when I couldn’t.”

His heart pinched in his chest, wishing that he could bring her with him so that she could tell Nyx herself. Why did it have to be too late for them if it wasn’t for him? They smiled at him again, hearing what he didn’t say, and the contentment in their faces soothed the pain in his chest.

“I love you,” Noctis said, before he lost his chance to say it ever again. “And thank you.”

The light engulfed him then, erasing the phantom lines in a burst of white and gold and red. He couldn’t feel time passing as he lay suspended in the light. He couldn’t tell if an eternity passed or just a single moment before the rest of the world’s colors were filled in, and the voices began to take form.

Faces winking into existence all around him. Voices ringing against the walls of a room both like home and not. Friends that had never been strangers, even in all the time that had passed where they could have been lost to him. And a lover, wrought with passion and spite, half-mad with the threat of loss posed before him.

His eyes shone like glass, sharp enough to kill, but ready to break at the slightest fault. Red around the edges, but dry of any tears to shed. Grief made him angry before it ever made him sad. It made him spit unfair curses at the friends that were already struggling with tears of their own. It took a tired reprimand from his king to pull him back into line.

“You think after ten years you might have learned to play well with others.”

All four of them stiffened before snapping their eyes to him, the colors and hues like well-worn paths Noctis had walked along all his life. The last crimson sparks of a tuft of phoenix down simmered from Nyx’s hand to sink deep inside of Noctis, warming through his very soul and binding it back to his body. Nyx bit down on a sound that Noctis had never heard him make. Something caught between a sob and a cheer that summoned the shimmer of tears he didn’t think he had left to the corners of his eyes.

“You stupid, selfless son of a bitch,” Nyx cursed before heaving Noctis into his arms.

The motion made Prompto, Ignis, and Gladio all jump forward too, piling onto the throne around Noctis and fighting to pull them all into each other’s arms. It was messy and painful, wet with tears and loud with laughter.

“You’re insane, Nyx!” Prompto said from where his face was buried into Noctis’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry I called you an asshole, idiot,” Gladio apologized in a shuddering voice from somewhere above Noctis’s head.

Ignis didn’t say anything, curled around Noctis’s waist and trying to contain a slight tremble that racked through him, unable to maintain any composure beyond it.

Noctis managed to wiggle his face free enough to find Nyx’s, smiling at the glimmer of tears that he was stubbornly trying to keep off his cheeks. “My hero,” he said, reaching around the bodies clutched around him to touch the tears at the corner of his eye.

That was enough to make them fall, dropping onto Noctis’s fingers like morning dew. Nyx shook his head and hid his face in Noctis’s hair. “And you’re mine.”

And that’s when Noctis noticed the light streaming throughout the throne room. When he turned his face to it, the sun nearly blinded him. In the white softness of it, he thought he could see the smiles of Luna and his father, spreading that light he’d seen in them in death for all the rest of the living to share.


End file.
